Glossarywh-relative: a relative clause introduced not by a complementiser but a wh-
element: The girl [whom I invited].
wh-element: question word. Question words often but not always begin with these
letters, e.g. where, what, when, who, whom. The question word how is also
considered a wh-element. Whether, although a word beginning with wh is
not considered to be a wh-element in this sense.
word category: a set of expressions that share certain linguistic features, a grouping of
words that cluster together, e.g. noun, verb. See also functional category,
thematic category.
X-bar theory: a module of GB containing three very simple rules to describe the
structure of the expressions of a language. See also specifier rule,
complement rule, adjunct rule.
yes–no question: a question that can be answered either with yes or no, formed either
by inverting the auxiliary with the subject as in Would you like to go to the
cinema? or the insertion of dummy do as in Did you enjoy the
performance?.
zero inflectional morpheme: as the morphology of the English language is rather
impoverished very often we have no visible markers of person and
number agreement on the verb (the exception being the third person
singular -s morpheme in the present tense). In the other cases the
inflection is assumed to be present in an invisible form. The zero
inflectional morpheme is one without phonological realisation but it
has syntactic functions to fulfil in the structure.
zero level projection: the head of a phrase, X in an XP.
zero relative: a relative clause that could be but is not introduced by an overt
complementiser: The man [- I told you about yesterday].
-role: see theta role.